![]() The earthquake proved to Sarah that the spirits were not appeased and doubled her effort to build even more. Winchester rose seven stories with a great central tower that towered over the home, but the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake came and toppled the top three stories. Winchester’s workmen had built for her an even grander mega-home than what we see today. Winchester Mystery House before the earthquake The Great 1906 Earthquake She had to make sure only the good spirits reached her and the bad spirits fended off. She paid handsomely but would fire anyone at the slightest annoyance because perhaps, her mission was so dire. Her only company during those 38 years were her carpenters and servants who toiled in her mansion night and day. She moved west to California and bought an unfinished eight room farmhouse in San Jose, and the construction of the Winchester Mystery House began, construction that did not cease until the day she died. Winchester that all the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester rifle were after her and advised her to move west and build a grand home for them or else she would meet the same fate as her late husband and daughter. ![]() At this point, Sarah was convinced she was cursed and consulted a medium. William Wirt Winchester, the inventor of the Winchester Repeating Rifle who had died suddenly from tuberculosis fifteen years after Annie’s death. Already born into high society, she married into more wealth to a Mr. Her only daughter, Annie, died as a newborn due to a disease called marasmus, which left Sarah devastated. She was named Sarah Winchester, and though incredibly wealthy, she lived a life not to be envied. The houseguests of Winchester weren’t your average high society houseguests they were said to be spirits - spirits conjured by the owner of the home. There’s one entrance to this room with three exits one’s a secret door that looks like a wall panel, one door with a door handle only on the séance room side, and one that leads to a dizzying drop one floor below to the kitchen. While other castle-like mansions tout their luxurious spas and theaters, this mega home instead has a séance room. Then there’s the creepiest of the creepy. Many of the stairs have 13 steps, many of the windows with 13 panes, 13 bathrooms, 13 gas jets on the Grand Ballroom chandelier, 13 windows in the 13th bathroom and 13 steps to get to it. The Grand Ballroom also never held a ball.Įven more unsettling, the rooms of the Winchester has a consistent theme: the number thirteen. The Grand Ballroom complete with organ seems pleasant enough but the two leaded stained-glass windows there bear the cryptic messages “Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts” and “These same thoughts people this small world,” lines apparently taken from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Richard II. ![]() You’re supposed to get lost in there.Įven the rooms of the Winchester are odd. There’s a skylight not on the roof but on the floor, a closet with a definitely not luxurious half inch of storage space, doors that open to blank walls, a front entry way no one was allowed in, and a second story door that opens to a drop outside. Inside this Victorian mega-home, there’s 40 staircases but some go nowhere - one even goes up to the ceiling for some reason, 10,000 windows including a number made of rare Tiffany art glass but some face the wrong direction and don’t let in light. No one ever said the owners of these castle mansions had to be normal! Inside the Mystery House But it’s the bizarre interior and even more bizarre history that carves its place as one of the greatest and most mysterious homes in America. There’s a water tower on the property, still in use today, a small belltower, and the gardens and statuary grace the home year round. At 24,000 square feet with forty bedrooms and thirteen bathrooms, the Victorian home, done in the Queen Anne style certainly fits the standards of a mega mansion. In San Jose, CA, at the heart of Silicon Valley, there’s a mega mansion unlike any other mega mansion.
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